8/15/2013

Lee Daniels' The Butler has every intention of being an important
movie. That and fishing quite obviously for some Oscar love, are the clear
mandates for Daniels, who serves up a chunky slice of civil rights history and
a real life story demanding of proper big screen treatment. The tale of Eugene
Allen, White House butler through eight Presidential administrations, is an
incredible one in its own right, but Daniels feels the need to turn the film
into a distracting cameo-filled spectacle that takes the "Forrest Gump"
approach to black history. Who needs realism when you can just litter the screen with celebrities,
Daniels hitting up everyone on his speed dial, or calling in every favor he's
ever been owed. It's the only excuse for such poor stunt-casting as John Cusack
stammering and sweating his way through as Richard Nixon, which is only
moderately worse than Liev Schreiber as Lyndon Johnson, which doesn't come
close to how awful Robin Williams is as Dwight Eisenhower. Yet they all pale in
comparison to Nelsan Ellis, the True Blood stand-out who is woefully
miscast as Martin Luther King, Jr. These are self-indulgent decisions borne out
of Daniels' need to show off, and make sure the audience is so enamored by the
star power they fail to notice the film's lack of emotional connection.

The story of White House butler Eugene Allen was first chronicled in a 2008
article in The Washington Post, detailing his amazing career watching the civil
rights movement from the most unique of vantage points. But Daniels and
screenwriter Danny Strong take that amazing life and broadly fictionalize it to
create the character Cecil Gaines (Forest Whitaker), who we meet as a young boy
in 1927 working on a plantation where he sees his mother (a barely recognizable
Mariah Carey) raped by the owner (Alex Pettyfer), and his father (yes that's
David Banner) shot for complaining about it. Breaking free of the racist
confines only to find an entire world of it beyond the fence, Cecil lucks into
a job as a hotel butler, proving himself such a reliable and capable worker the
White House comes calling for him to work under their employ.

Jumping forward in time to his life in DC, where he's married the alcoholic
Gloria (Oprah Winfrey), Cecil battles frequently with his rabble-rousing son
Louis (David Oyelowo). Cecil’s passivity clashes angrily with his son’s civil
rights activism. He's content in his duties as a butler, finding normalcy and
respect in taking care of others. A product of his time, Cecil is content not
to rock the boat, and talks about the "two faces" black people must
wear: the one they keep in secret, and the other they show to the white man.
One must remain "non-threatening", and certainly that's what the
apolitical Cecil does while time skips on past him.

The film pays lip service to a number of key moments in civil rights
history: the Woolworth's sit-in; the murder of Emmett Till; and Dr. King's
assassination, but they serve as mere markers in time and nothing more. Most of
these events are experienced by Louis, who follows the straight-line path from
activist to Freedom Rider to member of the Black Panthers, his Forrest
Gump-trek through history even including his being in Memphis on that fateful
day on April 4th 1968. Meanwhile Cecil's life doesn't really change, even as
Presidents come and go.

As played by Whitaker, Cecil is a humble man of fierce integrity, who picks
and chooses which battles are worth fighting. There's nuance in the portrayal
even as Daniels and Strong's screenplay is as subtle as a ripsaw. They do
occasionally find a few interesting wrinkles in the often-bitter relationship
between Cecil and Gloria, the latter growing lonely and spiteful at her
husband's constant absence. Oprah is a powerful presence on screen, and she
benefits from one of the few characters given something substantial to work
with as Gloria battles her personal demons while refereeing the disputes
between father and son. We see how the years wear them down physically and
spiritually, and their connection to one another alters believably over time,
until a sudden 180-degree turn towards activism by Cecil that doesn't feel
earned at all.

In a way it's laughable the court-mandated title change to Lee Daniels'
The Butler, because Daniels' directorial signature is to have no signature
at all. There's no question he can round up an A-list cast with the best of
them, but as a filmmaker calling him "mediocre" would be a gift.
Tonally, the film is a mess that relies on emotional manipulation, in much the
same way Daniels' Precious did to baffling acclaim years ago. Missed
opportunities for poignancy abound, such as a birthday party that is marred by
some truly devastating news that tears the Gaines family asunder. While Oprah
and Whitaker are devastatingly effective, the tragedy is telegraphed from so
far away it might have been in the concession line.

It's hard to imagine that such a lousy script comes from Danny Strong, who
wrote the brilliant and forceful political dramas Recount and Game
Change. So much about The Butler is undercooked and drawn in the thickest
lines possible, that one can only assume Daniels' rewrite was all-encompassing.
The historical facts are played with to put Cecil in places he couldn't have
been (a scene with Jackie Kennedy particularly egregious), and suggests that a
few mere words from him were enough to move Presidential policy. It's a
ridiculous notion that adds to the pure fantasy of the piece. A couple of years
ago, some critics piled on Best Picture nominee The Help for not
presenting a realistic portrayal of southern racism, and one wonders how those
same people will react to The Butler, which glosses over racism just the
same.

Barack Obama's candidacy in 2008 proves to be the film's most affecting
moment as we see Cecil and Gloria's taking in a sight impossible for them to
fathom. But it relies mostly on archival footage of the campaign, and Obama's
soaring, hopeful words rather than anything Daniels has to offer. Lee Daniels' The Butler is neither effective as a history lesson or
as crowd-pleasing civil rights drama. Daniels’ good intention overshadowed by
the need to be Oscar-worthy, the film unfortunately does a disservice to Eugene
Allen's story, and hopefully a better filmmaker will take up the cause some
day.